Begin to Hope
by Masquerading as Quality
Summary: Aurora's most enigmatic (and to be frank, most frightening) customer invites her to share a cup of coffee. [Response to a prompt for a coffee shop AU! Malora. A series of short, relatively fluffy one-shots.]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** A prompt response from many moons ago, and also a giant ball of cheese. I made the executive decision to listen to "Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop" by Landon Pigg while writing some of this, so consider this your soundtrack suggestion. I meant it as a one-shot, but I think it'll require a follow-up or two. Nothing too plotty, just some fluff for once. I hope that you will enjoy and share your thoughts!

* * *

If she is being completely honest with herself, Aurora is terrified of the woman.

It doesn't make any sense, really. She's just another customer. She comes in every day, sometimes twice, with her reusable cup, orders a large black coffee, sits at a table by the window and reads something or writes something for half an hour or so, and then leaves. What exactly is intimidating about that?

Well, nothing, when she put it that way.

But the woman is tall. Taller than most men. And she's bone-thin, and her suit coats emphasize that her shoulders, while thin, are decidedly square. And she has flawless olive skin and these high, sharp cheekbones and coal-black eyes. She wears her black hair back in a tight bun that emphasizes her dramatic widow's peak, and the curious thing is that on most people, a widow's peak would be a softening feature because it gives the face a sort of heart shape, but on this woman, it draws attention to the arch of her eyebrows, which draws attention back to those piercing black eyes, the gaze of which gives Aurora chills all over.

And the weirdest part of it...and this is only if Aurora is being _completely_ honest with herself, which doesn't happen all that often...is that Aurora isn't certain whether they're bad chills or good chills.

She has a weird name. Like something out of a fantasy novel. Like a villain out of a fantasy novel. The first time she said it, Aurora blinked and asked her to repeat it.

"Maleficent," the woman said again. Her voice was low and almost harsh. "If you've a keen enough ear, it's spelled like it sounds."

"Interesting name," said Aurora. Her voice cracked. She felt herself blushing.

Maleficent's facial expression remained stony. "If you write Millicent, I will personally see to it that you lose your job."

"You'll—?"

"And every job thereafter."

The troublesome part of Aurora that liked to push people's buttons wanted to respond, 'Really? Every single job in my life?' But the (fortunately) much larger part of Aurora that generally adhered to common sense could tell that, very likely, this woman could and would do anything she pleased.

Aurora works a lot. Her aunts treat her determination with varying degrees of understanding. Aunt Flora doesn't understand it at all. When her parents died, they entrusted Flora with a mind-boggling sum of money for Aurora's care. Flora could put her through silly old college easily if that's really how Aurora wants to waste her time. Aunt Fauna doesn't understand it, either, but admires Aurora's hard work and spirit, and tells her that every time they speak.

Though Aunt Merryweather has never outright said the words, Aurora gets the feeling that she understands. She has, after all, imbued Aurora with her fierce devotion to independence, and she and Flora argue more than anybody Aurora has ever met. Aunt Flora is a loving caretaker, but she has very particular and stringent ideas about life and the way it ought to be led, especially for a woman, and especially for Aurora. Aurora watched enough sitcoms growing up to know how quickly and how completely relying on a person like that, no matter how loving or well-meaning, could go wrong.

So Aurora has done her very best to make her own way in the world. She had to ask Aunt Flora for help a total of once, when she came down with mononucleosis a year and a half ago, and she honestly isn't certain whether eviction or starving to death or even a medieval debtor's prison would have been worse. She'd endured no less than ten lectures on the dangers of "getting around" and "disgracing herself", been subjected to daily inquiries for about two months on whether or not this might encourage her to find a nice, respectable man and settle down (at the age of nineteen, remember) before she contracted "something far worse", and as if the phone calls and public meetings weren't enough, Aunt Flora had begun to show up at Aurora's apartment unannounced at all times of the day—usually before 8 A.M.) just to "check up on her"—namely, her (complete lack of) sexual activity.

Okay, so she'd drunkenly made out with a couple of girls at a party, one of whom had thereafter displayed a slightly troubling cough, but it was a one-time occurrence. It didn't _mean_ anything. Aurora probably isn't even gay or whatever. She just hasn't found the right guy yet, you know? Aunt Flora can just chill the fuck out already. All Aurora does 99% of the time is work and school and her book club once a week, when she has time, and that's just because of this girl who...well, anyway. Whatever. Not a big deal.

The point is, Aurora now has irrefutable proof that asking Aunt Flora for money is the worst-case scenario. So she works at the coffee shop a lot.

Consequently, she sees Maleficent a lot. More consistently, in fact, than she sees anyone else in her life. So maybe it's natural that she's focusing all this weird energy obsessing about her. It's just a phase. It'll fade with time. She'll get used to Maleficent.

She holds onto that delusion for a couple of months. That's when Aunt Flora sends "That Boy I've Been Telling You About."

That Boy I've Been Telling You About is Aurora's deceased father's childhood best friend's son. The family moved away for work, like, forty years ago, and the newly-divorced childhood best friend and his twentysomething son moved back sometime last year. Aunt Flora hasn't found it in her soul to shut up about him for a solid six months. So handsome, so tall, so well-mannered, oh, you'd be perfect together, Aurora, blah blah blah. Aurora got into the habit of making a lame excuse to get off the phone every time that portion of the conversation commenced. Instead of taking the hint, Aunt Flora has simply moved the That Boy I've Been Telling You About talk to the end of whatever agenda she has for her phone calls with Aurora, that she might get all of the pertinent details in one more time before they say goodbye.

This morning, Aunt Flora called Aurora at exactly 5:30, just before she left for the coffee shop, an act which immediately made Aurora suspicious. Sure enough, after a few minutes of meaningless pleasantries, made all the more irritating by their occurrence at such a dreadful hour of the morning, before Aurora had had her own coffee, Aunt Flora blithely informed her that That Boy I've Been Telling You About was coming into the coffee shop today to meet her.

Maleficent comes in at ten. On weekdays, she usually comes in a bit after the coffee shop opens and a bit before people come rushing in before work, presumably to avoid both crowds, but weekends are more of a wild card—there's no telling when she'll show, and therefore no time to prepare for the curious shock to the system that is her presence.

"Large black coffee?" Aurora asks her. Her attempt at cheer only makes her voice sound frail.

"Need you always ask?"

"Maybe someday you'll want something different," says Aurora with a shrug and her best attempt at a smile.

Maleficent's black eyes briefly sweep down and then back up again. Aurora shivers. "Maybe I will," she replies cryptically. The corner of her dark red lips curl up into a small, nearly imperceptible smirk. She takes her coffee from a dumbfounded Aurora and walks away, her spot at the counter replaced by a smiling and fresh-faced (unusually so for someone who hasn't yet received his coffee) boy.

"Aurora?"

Aurora raises her eyebrows. She never really knows how to feel about customers who insist on addressing her by her name, even regulars, and even though it's on her nametag. "That's me!" she says, a little awkwardly. "What can I get you?"

"I'm Phillip," he says. Aurora stares at him blankly. "Your dad's friend's son? Your aunt..."

"Oh! Right. Hi." Aurora doesn't know how she's supposed to proceed. Does Aunt Flora expect them to go on a date? Get married right away? How do these things usually go?

For better or worse, Phillip carries the conversation for her. At first, Aurora stares at him, unblinking, wondering how to get rid of the impressive knot of awkwardness forming in the pit of her stomach, but after twenty minutes or so of what is quickly morphing into senseless white noise, she has the wherewithal to notice that Maleficent is watching her, and suddenly as they lock eyes everything seems alarmingly quiet.

"Aurora?" Phillip prompts her.

Across the room, Maleficent takes a pointed sip of her coffee.

"Hmm?" Aurora averts her eyes quickly, but reluctantly.

"Would you like to go out sometime?"

"I, uh..." Aurora blinks, swallows uncomfortably. "Sure. Sometime."

Phillip's face lights up in a sort of disingenuous smile. Aurora isn't sure why it makes her feel slimy. Maybe because the smile doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Great! Maybe tonight?"

"I'm working tonight," Aurora says, feeling a flood of relief at the truth in her statement. "I work most nights."

Phillip is undeterred. "All right then, how about you give me your number, and we'll work out a time?"

Aurora can feel Maleficent's eyes on her, and she wonders what exactly Maleficent finds so interesting about this scenario that it's distracted her from whatever it is she's reading this morning, unless she just gleans this much amusement out of watching Aurora suffer. "Yeah, sure," says Aurora dismissively.

Maleficent leaves before Phillip does, and weirdly, her absence leaves Aurora feeling even more uncomfortable than her presence did.

* * *

"You're back." The words escape her lips long before she has time to think better of them, and Maleficent looks up from her stack of papers with a sort of impassive surprise.

Aurora has half a mind to run behind the counter and into the stock room to hide forever in humiliation, but the sensible part of her mind knows that isn't a real option. "I mean—I didn't expect you...back...so soon," she adds, lamely, and feels her face flush. "Anyway. Uh. Welcome back."

Maleficent arches one eyebrow at Aurora, then turns her coffee cup so that Aurora can see the name written on the side: _Millicent_.

In spite of herself, Aurora barely stifles a laugh. "Oh," she says behind her fingertips. "Who's responsible for that?"

Maleficent's expression does not change, but she waits a beat before she retorts, "Why on earth would I have bothered to remember his name?"

"Fair enough." Aurora's smile widens, but she feels very odd for being so amused. This is the friendliest exchange they've ever had, by far, and Aurora doesn't know what to make of such a drastic change.

"Are you coming into work again?" Maleficent asks her. Perhaps it's just the unusual darkness of her eyes, but Aurora can't help but feel as though she's being studied.

"In a bit," she replies. "I had such an exhausting morning, I needed a little pick-me-up before my closing shift."

Maleficent nods. "Would you care to join me?"

Aurora's mind goes momentarily blank. She feels as though something...or everything...has skidded to a stop, and she is left reeling in its wake. "Join you...?" she echoes stupidly.

Maleficent inclines her head to indicate that, yes, that is what she said, and she will absolutely not deign to ask twice.

"I...I mean..." In that dreadful, stuttering instant, Aurora comes to a terrible realization. "Yes! I'd love to!" the words burst forth from her lips, too surprised, too excited.

While Aurora finishes stammering, Maleficent sips her coffee. "Well, I haven't got all day," she says, almost pleasantly, and Aurora scrambles behind the counter to make her favourite drink as quickly as possible while also taking as deep a breath as she can manage. Her most terrifying customer just asked if Aurora would like to join her for coffee...the most terrifying, certainly, but also the most fascinating.

Before Aurora has fully taken her seat, Maleficent asks her, "So tell me, what sort of a person works a morning and a closing shift in this tragic establishment on the same day?"

"The sort of person who's trying to put herself through school," Aurora shrugs, then, horrified, remembers something Maleficent once said to her. "You didn't get the guy who got your name wrong fired, did you?"

"I may have let him off with a warning," Maleficent replies. "But only because he started blubbering and begging. I do enjoy begging."

Aurora struggles unsuccessfully to hide her amusement. "Poor guy."

"What are you studying?"

"Disappointing my legal guardians, mostly."

Maleficent doesn't smile. "How does such a lovely woman go about becoming a disappointment?"

Aurora averts her eyes, feels her cheeks flushing slightly, and runs a hand through her hair to distract herself from the oddness of her reaction. "I think the latest thing is that I'm supposed to like that guy who came in here earlier."

Maleficent pulls a face briefly, but as quickly as it was there, it's gone, replaced once again by somewhat haughty passivity. "And why not?" she says, her voice flat. "He had a very...symmetrical face."

Aurora bursts into laughter. It's loud, and inappropriate, and several people unabashedly turn and give her pointed looks, and Maleficent still isn't smiling, but somehow she looks pleased, and Aurora feels like an enormous weight has been lifted from her shoulders. "He's so boring!" she says, still delighted. "I don't remember a single thing he said to me!"

"Except that he asked you on a date," Maleficent replies.

Aurora's delight is somewhat dampened. "Oh. Right."

"Why are your, ah...guardians...so taken with him?"

"God," Aurora groans. "I could tell you his life story. My Aunt Flora has had like thirty minutes prepared on him every time we've spoken for half a year, at least! He's my dad's old best friend's son, as if that automatically makes him something special. Pretty sure 'Uncle Hubert' got divorced because his wife couldn't decide if she hated his gambling or his drinking more."

"Come now," says Maleficent, her voice rich with amusement. "He could be a perfectly lovely young man."

Aurora takes a long sip of her sugary beverage before she replies. "The thing is...I just don't care? I don't have a good explanation for it, I just...don't."

"Then why did you say yes?"

Aurora rests her chin in her hand. "I don't know, I didn't want to be rude but I wanted him to leave?" She groans again. "Gonna have to deal with that one someday, huh?"

"Better sooner than later," Maleficent agrees. "Society's obsession with 'politeness' over truthfulness never ceases to baffle me. What have you to lose? You know nothing of this handsome stranger but some details from his family's past, and surely your aunt won't resent you for turning down a date." She averts her eyes. "A meddlesome guardian is bound to have countless others in store."

Aurora gazes into her coffee cup and gives it a stir so the cream and sugar swirl into intricate patterns. "Her trying to set me up wasn't exactly...unprompted."

Maleficent is silent, evidently awaiting Aurora's desire to continue, but it's barely even something she's acknowledged in the privacy of her own mind. There's no one in her life she would trust with the thought she's been forming over the past year. Why should she trust a beautiful stranger?

Perhaps she's driven to speak not in spite of Maleficent's mystique, but because of it. Aurora has known most of the people in her life since before she could remember, and they all have a very...concrete set of values. Aurora doesn't know what Maleficent values other than getting the right name on her coffee cup, and there's a certain...reckless abandon in the notion of divulging a secret to someone who is herself more or less a secret.

"My aunts sort of...got wind that I might have made...some choices...they didn't approve of," she hedges, slowly. "And it's not like I'm...I mean, that is, I don't know if I'm..." She squeezes her eyes closed and takes a long drink from her coffee, savours the warmth sliding down her throat and takes some small comfort in it. "I don't know what I am," she says at last. "And if I am...if I were..." she opens her eyes to find that she has Maleficent's full attention, and it sets her heart aflutter. "...different..." she breathes. "I just don't know how they'll react."

Maleficent nods, but remains silent and almost unnervingly attentive.

Aurora swallows, hard. "It could be bad," she whispers.

Maleficent's brow furrows subtly, then after a moment, she says, "Well, it was unpleasant for me. But I came out of it all right."

Aurora feels as though the breath has been sucked from her lungs. "You...?" SHe's not sure what to say. She feels like crying, but it's from a peculiar kind of...happiness? "But...it turned out okay?" she wonders, and she's not even entirely sure where the words came from. "Really?"

Maleficent reaches out a hand, hesitates, then somewhat stiffly places it atop Aurora's. Her hands are large, and her fingers are unusually long and thin. Her touch is cold, but it sends a red-hot jolt through Aurora's entire body. They've been looking into one another's eyes for awhile now, Aurora realizes vaguely, but she cannot bring herself to look away.

"Truly," Maleficent tells her.

The ambient music Aurora has long since learned to turn out has changed suddenly. It's somehow become the most prevalent noise in the room.

 _I think that possibly, maybe I'm falling for you.  
Yes, there's a chance that I've fallen quite hard over you._

For a moment, they're suspended in time. Neither of them seems willing to move, to move away or to move forward, for to move in any direction will be to return to reality. And in reality, what are they to one another? Maleficent is some sort of successful businesswoman who likes her coffee the colour of her eyes, and Aurora is some mess of a college student who doesn't even know what she wants...

Or, more precisely, if she can handle wanting this.

In the end, she's the one to look away first. She withdraws her hand and runs it through her hair, lets out a sort of strangled chuckle, and fumbles for something to say. "Well, now you know more about me than people who've known me my whole life," she says airily. "What do you do when you're not here?"

"Nothing particularly interesting," Maleficent replies easily. Her focus remains unbroken. There's something so steady, so deliberate about her presence. She doesn't waver, doesn't falter, doesn't back down. "Go to work, pursue some hobbies, dream of something more, something that will enrapture me."

In the wake of her observation about Maleficent's unshakeable demeanour, Aurora feels even less certain of herself. "Seems like you're being deliberately mysterious," she says with a small half-smile.

Maleficent finishes her coffee, slowly and deliberately. "Well, if one wishes to see someone again," she says as she stands, "one ought always to leave her wanting more." She takes Aurora's hand from where it's been lying limp on the table, and presses cold, smooth lips against her knuckles. She's halfway out the door before Aurora has regained control of herself, and all that remains of her is the coffee collar with Millicent written on it, which she's left on the table.

Aurora picks it up, grasps it tightly in both her hands, her head reeling, and takes a long, deep breath. She has to get back to work in far too few minutes, has to return to the reality where she's just a mess of a college student who doesn't know what she's doing most of the time. She's going to have a lot of things to deal with in the near future. She's going to have to turn That Boy I've Been Telling You About down, for real, and she's going to have to have...probably a series of painful conversations with her aunts, probably Flora in particular. To top it all off, she's going to have to have a series of painful conversations with herself.

But for right now, just for this moment, she's got this coffee collar between her fingers. She's got this silly little memento of an ordinary afternoon that suddenly became extraordinary, this concrete proof that what just happened wasn't a figment of her sleep-deprived, coffee-addled brain.

And with this in mind, Aurora finds it in herself to smile. She turns the coffee collar over in her hands to find that on the back is written a telephone number, and she realizes she can now put a name to what she felt earlier, that strange, fluttery, almost painful almost-happiness: hope.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** THIS IS AN EVEN BIGGER BALL OF CHEESE. This is the fluffiest thing I have ever written in my life. Your soundtrack suggestion for this one is "Better" by Regina Spektor. I hope that you will enjoy and share your thoughts!

* * *

 _If I kiss you where it's sore,  
Will you feel better?  
Will you feel anything at all?_

"I have to get back to work soon," says Aurora, the admission sadder and heavier than she'd like for it to be.

"Call in sick," Maleficent suggests.

Aurora laughs at the notion. She'd never do such a thing, and Maleficent knows her well enough by now to know that. In fact, she'd bet Maleficent knew that about her by the end of their first meeting. "They saw me this morning," she says. But she makes no move to stand from the park bench where they've been sitting for the better part of an hour, facing forward, knees separated by less than an inch.

"People get sick during the day," Maleficent replies. "Especially when they never take any time off."

"I could never..." she says, but even as the words leave her lips, she's considering it. How wild would it be? How gloriously out of character? To call in sick to work so she can stay here with Maleficent and continue to just...be.

It's strange that such a commanding presense is the only one in Aurora's entire life that makes her feel at ease. Maleficent doesn't expect her to do or be or say anything in particular except for the truth, and what's really on her mind. She never realized it before, but pretty much everyone else she knows expects specific answers to specific questions, and limited reactions to limiting situations. She knows what she's supposed to say or do like it's scripted, and now that she knows there's something more to life than that, she finds it endlessly frustrating.

"Come now, Aurora," Maleficent stands from their park bench, still facing away from her. Aurora's name on Maleficent's lips is like satin sheets. It's like that first sip of coffee early in the morning. It's like what Aurora imagines an addictive drug would do to her. "Haven't you ever done anything you weren't supposed to do?"

Aurora closes her eyes and leans her head back to stare up into the sky. She told her Aunt Flora she didn't want to go on a date with That Boy I've Been Telling You About, or any boy for that matter, but she chickened out before she made it any further than that, and said she just wanted to focus on work and school for now. She told Phillip the same thing, but unfortunately, this only increased the frequency with which he visits the coffee shop. Maleficent had shaken her head smugly and informed her that telling him that only made her a challenge to him.

She hasn't told anyone she's been seeing Maleficent...if what they do can even be called that. Once or twice a week, they have coffee before or after one of Aurora's shifts, and sometimes, like today, they take walks through the city together. Usually just to the building where Maleficent works or the bus stop Aurora sometimes takes home if she's too tired to walk. Maleficent could certainly walk her home—she doesn't live that far from the coffee shop—but in truth, Aurora is nervous to allow Maleficent any further into what little personal life she has.

There isn't really a good reason for it. Her aunts go through stages of practically stalking her, and they'd definitely disapprove, and that would be a whole mess to deal with, but more than their reaction, Aurora fears Maleficent's. As she's just been contemplating, she's a different person around Maleficent than she is with everyone else in her life.

Sometimes, when she hasn't had quite enough sleep or she's feeling particularly lonely, it occurs to Aurora that Maleficent could just simply start going to another coffee shop, and Aurora would never see her again. And where would she be then? Where would she be if she slacked off at the job that puts her through school, if she shirked the only constant in her life just for this mysterious, magnetic woman who could just disappear at any time on a whim?

She's allowed her mind to wander, perhaps deliberately, from Maleficent's question. Has she ever done anything she wasn't supposed to? Ever, in her entire life?

"I drunkenly made out with a couple of girls at a party once," she confesses quietly. "That ended pretty spectacularly. I got mono and had to ask my aunts for help. Might as well have been Aunt Flora's prisoner for the next few months, and she didn't even know I caught it from a girl."

Maleficent turns back to face her and offers her hands. Aurora hesitates, then takes them and stands. She's taller than average, herself, but Maleficent always seems somehow to tower over her. It's something about the way she carries herself, the way she occupies her space so fully.

"So you're frightened," says Maleficent. "Frightened of...unforeseen consequences."

Aurora purses her lips, swallows hard, nods silently.

"There's nothing wrong with kissing a girl or going to a party, Aurora," says Maleficent. Her voice is harsh no matter the circumstances, but this is as warm as it has ever sounded, and Aurora shivers unexpectedly. "But even if in someone's perception there were, you could spend every day of your life doing exactly as you're told, and bad things would still happen. To you, to your loved ones, to strangers on the news," Maleficent lets go of Aurora's hands and offers her arm, instead. They walk towards the great suspension bridge adjacent to the little park where they've been sitting. It's in the opposite direction from the coffee shop.

"If you put your faith in another person, they'll likely let you down. If you fall in love, you'll likely get your heart broken. If you take a risk, there will in all likelihood be unforeseen consequences. The likelihood of anything in this world turning out for the best is very small." They stop walking, not far from the crosswalk that would take them onto the bridge's pedestrian walkway. Maleficent turns to face Aurora. "But if you never try, never risk anything?" she says. "You lose even that."

Aurora grabs Maleficent by the arms, pushes herself up onto her tiptoes, and kisses her. It's like nothing she's ever felt in her life. She's weak in the knees, and she only keeps her balance because Maleficent grasps her firmly by the waist and pulls her close. Their bodies are pressed together, deliciously warm compared with the chilly autumn air that surrounds them, and Maleficent's lips are so soft, and wow, is she a good kisser, and they're surrounded by a beautiful park and a bustling tourist attraction, but they might as well have fallen out of time and space altogether, because all that exists for Aurora is Maleficent, holding her tightly, and kissing her back.

They break apart, gasping for air, and Aurora is smiling so widely it hurts, and Maleficent never smiles, but her black eyes are glittering in the warm afternoon light, and she's looking at Aurora like she's something special.

Aurora suddenly feels brave enough for anything. Brave enough to tell her aunts who she really is, and who she's been seeing, brave enough to allow Maleficent into her life even if that only makes it harder when she leaves it, brave enough to allow herself this one glorious chance, to do something she isn't supposed to: to want this, desperately.

She stumbles backward from Maleficent, one hand still grasping at the sleeve of Maleficent's jacket, the other hand fumbling for her phone. They haven't broken eye contact, and Aurora has no intention of ever looking away.

"Hi, Roxanne? It's Aurora. I'm really sorry, but I've got some kind of a stomach bug, and I can't come in for my shift tonight."

"No! Aurora, you never get sick! Ugh, fine. We'll be fine for one night. Get better."

"Thanks, Roxanne."

As Aurora replaces her phone in her pocket, Maleficent inclines her head slightly, and raises one dramatically arched eyebrow.

"I feel pretty damn guilty," says Aurora accusatorily.

One corner of Maleficent's lips quirks upward so subtly that if Aurora were any further away, she'd never have noticed it. This, the first time Maleficent has ever shown her anything even remotely resembling a smile, brings Aurora's own ear-splitting grin back to the surface immediately. She takes Maleficent by the arm and practically drags her into the crowd of people approaching the bridge's walkway.

They walk arm in arm the whole way, and mysteriously, no one runs into them or bothers them at all. Maleficent's presence affords them a pleasant bubble of personal space. They stop in the middle of the bridge to listen to a young woman playing the violin and look at the city skyline as the sun hangs lower and lower in the sky, painting the clouds in hues of orange and red, and the lights in the tall buildings across the water begin to light up the sky in the sun's absence.

They walk across the bridge and stop at a diner, and Aurora balks at the menu's selection of alcoholic coffees.

"Coffee mixed with tequila?" she exclaims.

"It's quite good," Maleficent replies. "Try it."

"I don't know..." she begins. She hasn't had any alcohol since that fateful party, despite having recently turned twenty-one. But she's already done something pretty crazy tonight in calling in sick to work just to hang out with her ever-mysterious customer-turned-almost-friend. "You know what? Why not?"

Again, Maleficent flashes her that tiny, almost imperceptible smile. "Why not, indeed."

Aurora has to break out her state ID, which is still the incorrectly-oriented under-21 one, and the waiter has scarcely handed it back to her before Maleficent takes it from between her fingertips to examine it.

"Well," she remarks. "It seems some of us do not experience the awkward teen years."

Aurora laughs. "Are you kidding me? I was a mess."

Maleficent bites her lower lip, and Aurora's mind momentarily goes blank. "You certainly didn't look it," she says, then hands Aurora's ID back to her.

"My aunts would hardly let me have any friends, forget about going over to their houses. And even when I was out for a couple of hours, they called me like every five minutes," she sighs. "College has been..." she looks down at the picture, the strained smile and meticulously applied make-up, "...more of an improvement than I remembered, I guess. But it's like they're just waiting for me to fail so they can swoop back in and run my life again."

The alcoholic coffees arrive, served with a generous scoop of whipped cream on top. "I'm sure they mean well, or whatever meaningless platitude is expected of me," says Maleficent. "Cheers."

Aurora manages a small smile and takes an experimental sip of her tequila coffee. The alcoholic taste is strong and foreign to her, but somehow in this moment, it's exactly what she wants. "Wow," she remarks, and her smile becomes more genuine. "You didn't lead me astray after all."

"I wouldn't be so quick to say that," Maleficent replies lightly. "In truth, I know nothing about raising children, nor do I have any desire to, and my mother was fortunately extremely neglectful. But it seems that you were their pet project up until you acquired the freedom to pursue your own life. They're simply having difficulty letting go of that."

Aurora sighs. "Does life ever stop feeling like a constant battle?"

Maleficent chuckles quietly. It's a low, rich, reverberant sound, and it touches Aurora's heart. "Sometimes, rarely, one is granted a momentary respite."

They mitigate the force of the alcohol with a giant basket of cheese fries, and Aurora can't remember the last time she's had something so delicious. Her apartment is mostly stocked with canned soup and ramen noodles.

"It's kind of weird to me to watch you eating cheese fries," she says to Maleficent. "In my head I guess I pictured you only ever frequenting five-star restaurants or, like, having veal fed to you in your bed or something."

"Nonsense," says Maleficent pleasantly. "I find the idea of someone feeding me in bed detestable."

Aurora laughs. "Favourite food, hands down?"

"I only feast on the blood of my enemies," Maleficent replies without missing a beat, then eats another cheese fry.

"You never answer my questions!"

"Perhaps you're not asking the right ones."

The sun has long since set when they make their way back across the bridge, and Aurora is feeling very tipsy, but walking arm in arm with Maleficent, she feels no fear. There's something inexplicably frightening about her, to be certain, and perhaps Aurora has yet to discover what that something might truly be, but to have someone so intimidating by her side, for the moment, feels like a tremendous comfort.

"I hardly know anything about you," says Aurora cheerfully. "Every time I ask you a question, you say something completely mysterious!"

"Some of us spend our youths learning to hide ourselves without making it seem deliberate or obvious," Maleficent replies. "After so many years, it becomes a reflex."

"But I want to know you," Aurora insists.

"Are you quite certain?" Maleficent wonders. "No one who knows me likes me very much."

Aurora considers this for a moment, thinks hazily of the way she felt about Maleficent before speaking to her, of the way there's something underneath the surface with her—something that seems like it could be dangerous. At the same time, there's something about Maleficent that makes Aurora trust her. In fact, as she's been thinking this whole evening, sometimes it is exactly the quality that intimidates her that also makes her feel safe.

"Maybe you've just never given anyone a real chance?"

Maleficent is silent for awhile. When they reach the other side of the bridge, she asks, "Where am I escorting you, milady?"

To her surprise, Aurora falters. She thinks of what she said not a moment prior, about not giving anyone a real chance, an echo of what Maleficent said earlier about taking risks, and how she's here now thinking about just asking Maleficent to walk her to the nearest bus stop, so she can continue to live in the strange, thrilling, frightening in-between where Maleficent is an enormous part of her life, yet completely separate from it. Where she can feed the delusion that if Maleficent spontaneously disappeared from her life, her world wouldn't shatter.

Instead, she gives the address of her apartment building, and they continue to walk in silence, observing the crowds of people Aurora's age stumbling around the city, already drunk and yelling and happy and wild even though it can't be that late.

"What time is it?" Aurora wonders as they turn onto her block.

"Nearly ten," Maleficent tells her. "They must have started early," she indicates the group of rowdy twenty-somethings across the street from them.

Aurora is blown away. 'It's been that long?" she marvels. It felt like they sat in that diner for mere moments. The time they spent walking across the bridge—a trek that takes between forty-five minutes to an hour depending upon one's pace and fellow walkers— passed by in a blur.

"Was it worth your while, taking the evening off from the fast-paced world of caffeine and artificial sweetener?"

Aurora laughs, a bit sadly, and focuses her attention upward, on the buildings that tower over their heads. "I think tomorrow it might feel like a dream."

"A good dream?" Maleficent wonders as they stop at the bottom of the stairs that lead to Aurora's building. "Or a bad dream?"

Aurora grasps at the sleeves of Maleficent's jacket and gazes up into her eyes, so dark in the dim lights from the street that Aurora feels she could get lost in them. "Much better than a dream," she says. "In my dreams, just before we say goodbye, you...take me in your arms..."

As though she's anticipated Aurora's thoughts, Maleficent wraps her arms tightly about Aurora's waist. Aurora's heart flutters, and though she has no fear of falling, her grip on Maleficent's sleeves tightens.

"And then..."

They're not a breath away now. Aurora is acutely aware of the promise of warmth from Maleficent's lips, a stark contrast to the cold of the night air, and her body is tingling all over.

"I wake up..." she breathes, practically against Maleficent's lips, but suddenly Maleficent has withdrawn just ever so slightly, a mischievous glint in her eyes, and Aurora is left with a peculiar kind of ache in her body and an all-too-familiar sensation of spinning in her head.

Maleficent withdraws her hands from Aurora's waist, takes her hand, and kisses it with a kind of agonizing slowness, never breaking eye contact. Aurora's body is on fire. She's never understood the idea of someone being utterly overwhelmed by desire until this moment, and she thinks she might be panting for air.

"That's a quote from a movie for children, you know," she says. "Sweet dreams, Sleeping Beauty."

Maleficent disappears into the crowd as though by magic, and a part of Aurora wonders if perhaps she is dreaming, if perhaps she has been harbouring vivid delusions for the past several months, but the kiss they shared earlier remains the most real, the most enduring sensation she has ever known, and sitting on her shitty kitchen table, like a tragic centerpiece, there's the coffee collar with Millicent written on it.

She clutches it against her chest like an amulet, just like she did when Maleficent left it for her, the only proof that she's definitely, definitely not just completely making this whole thing up, and she begins to laugh quietly to herself. It's not the kind of laughter that comes from amusement, but rather, from a happiness so sudden, so surprising, so seemingly impossible, that the notion that it could be real, that this could really be happening, is nothing short of hysterical.

She washes her face and falls into bed, still hazy with happiness, body still tingling with maddeningly unrealized potential. The ache between her legs remains unbearable, and the touch of her own hand is utterly unsatisfying. Her eyes drift closed, and her mind offers up the image of Maleficent's hand, long-fingered and elegant, Maleficent's eyes, dark and full of every emotion her face never showed, Maleficent's voice, deep and cold and so powerful that even the simplest word reverberated in Aurora's very core.

Aurora's name on Maleficent's lips...Maleficent's attention focused on Aurora...that strange quality about her that made her both frightening and reassuring...

A tortured moan escapes Aurora's lips. She thinks of the way Maleficent leaned in, almost kissed her goodbye, withdrew, and this—this deliberate mystery in which Maleficent continues to shroud herself is the thought that sends Aurora over the edge. A wave of agonizing pleasure crashes over her body. It's a tidal wave—overwhelming, overpowering, devastating—and yet her longing remains unmitigated.

As she drifts towards slumber, she's comforted by the memory of something Maleficent said to her the first time they had coffee together.

 _If one wishes to see someone again, one ought always to leave her wanting more._

 _Well if that's your game,_ Aurora thinks, just before sleep claims her. _Mission accomplished_.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Thank you for your patience! I scrapped like 4 or 5 drafts of this chapter before it finally started to work with me. Only one more chapter planned for this piece at the moment, but since it's basically just a series of one-shots I could see continuing it at some point.

* * *

Usually the long hours at work don't bother Aurora much—she knows what she has to do and she knows why—but this particular day is beginning to weigh on her spirits. She left her phone at home, she spilled hot coffee on her wrist first thing in the morning and the burn is still smarting, and she can feel the sheer length of the work day in the nerves of her heels as she trudges home.

The door of Aurora's apartment has three locks: the normal one that always locks when the front door is closed, a second lock on the same knob, and a deadbolt. Only the first is locked. Aurora feels her stomach drop as she enters her apartment.

"Aurora." Aunt Flora's voice is not particularly wide-ranging in terms of tonal quality. It can be overbearing, it can be jovial, or it can be severe. "I hope you have a very good explanation for your behaviour." Strike that—it can be jovial or sincere. It's always overbearing.

"Aunt Flora?" Aurora says simply as she lets the door fall closed behind her. Anything she could ask would be a mistake. She doesn't know how to proceed until she knows why her aunt is upset.

Aunt Flora produces Aurora's phone, left unlocked, of all things, and with a text message window open. She can't quite make out the text from across the room, yet somehow she knows instantly what Aunt Flora has found. She can't quite remember exactly what she wrote to Maleficent over the last day or two, only that it was more than enough to lead a casual observer to disastrous conclusions.

"I am _worried_ about you, Aurora," Aunt Flora begins, and Aurora feels a fresh twist of panic somewhere in her abdomen. Much of what follows is a blur, or garbled, perhaps, and distant, like Aurora is hearing it from underwater. Indeed, she feels very much like she might be drowning. Her feet are positively throbbing, as is the fresh burn on her arm, and the rest of her has gone icy cold and unsteady.

The word _unnatural_ is thrown about, as is the word _abomination_. _Sickness_ , too, and at that, Aurora thinks she might experience a far more tangible form of such an accusation. In the end, Aurora finds that she is beginning to lean heavily upon the back of one of the chairs at her little kitchen table, and Aunt Flora has taken her place at the door, waving her phone in front of her face, nearly screeching words Aurora can hardly bring herself to comprehend.

"You can't do that!" Aurora cries out suddenly, without thinking. "I pay for that!"

Mistake. But then again, anything she said would have been a mistake—she knew that going in. "Oh?" Flora counters. "And who paid for your food and clothes and shelter for eighteen years? Who helped you when you were sick last year, out doing Lord-knows-what when you wouldn't even _acknowledge_ Hubert's son, who would have been glad to have you for some reason? Where would you be without me?"

 _Better off_ , Aurora almost spits back, but too soon a wave of guilt washes over her, like an illness in itself, and she feels the room spinning with the force of it. She sinks into her chair and watches helplessly as Flora nods pointedly, says something else that involves the phrase _for your own good_ , and leaves. She sees the door slam, but cannot hear anything besides the pounding of her own heart in her ears. It occurs to her vaguely that Aunt Flora would have locked her inside her own apartment if she could.

The next thought that occurs to her is perhaps even more depressing. She wants to talk to Maleficent, but hasn't a phone with which to do so.

She lays her head down on her kitchen table and cries senselessly for some time. She tries not to think too much about the words Aunt Flora spoke to her just now, but each cruel phrase returns to her unbidden, and brings with it a fresh wave of tears. The most painful thought that plagues her—and also the most prominent—is that of course this was going to happen eventually. Of course she couldn't be happy forever. Of course she couldn't do anything she really wanted to and expect to get away with it.

She kicks off her shoes at long last, and orders a veritable fuckton of Chinese food from the place down the block, one of few indulgences she ever allows herself. She fires up the old laptop she inherited from Aunt Fauna and, for lack of anything better to do, wraps herself up in a mountain of blankets and pops in the disc for the movie she borrowed from the library on a whim.

The similarities are funny, and not a little unnerving, but once Aurora gets past the familiar names and even mannerisms, she finds the movie oddly soothing. Once she's sufficiently stuffed herself with Chinese take-out, she finds she's no longer hovering quite so close to the edge of renewed despair.

Sometime around the part where the princess learns the truth of her identity, Aurora hears a gentle knock upon her door that startles her. She untangles herself from her blankets and approaches the front door with hands at the ready, as though she might somehow shield herself from whoever has come to call upon her.

The face that greets her through the peephole is certainly not one she expected, and Aurora feels her stomach flip in an entirely different fashion then. She flings open the door, delighted, but then stops cold once faced with the reality that is her Maleficent, the one of this world and not the one in the children's movie, and the dreadful reality of her own situation.

"Forgive me for intruding," says Maleficent. She isn't quite as coiffed as usual. Her hair, which she usually keeps slicked back, falls in damp tendrils about the sharpness of her face. Her scarf, which bears a few flecks of melting snow, isn't neatly knotted, but rather thrown on haphazardly over her coat, like she left in a hurry. She is somehow even more beautiful in her disorder. "And if your message was genuine, I shall leave you be without further question."

"Message?" Aurora echoes.

Maleficent quirks one eyebrow subtly. "That," she says crisply, "is precisely what I thought." She produces her own phone, almost a mirror of the one that was waved before Aurora's eyes a couple of hours prior, unlocked and with a text window open.

" _What happened between us was wrong_ ," Aurora reads aloud. " _Do not contact me again_." All her composure, all the warmth of the comfort food and the silly movie with the familiar names and mannerisms, flees from her in an instant, and she is left feeling cold and empty and lost once more. "I'm sorry," she whispers, before she covers her face and begins to cry all over again.

She feels long-fingered hands upon her shoulders and flinches instinctively, leans into the softness of the disorderly scarf against the hardness that is Maleficent's spindly frame, and allows herself to be held while she cries. She is infinitely thankful that Maleficent does not press her for an explanation just yet—she doesn't know where to begin.

Maleficent threads her fingers through Aurora's hair, and the tingle that both soothes and excites is enough to mitigate the force of her sorrow considerably. She swipes at her face with her sleeve and meets Maleficent's dark eyes, hoping in vain that she'll think of something to say and coming up woefully short. "Thank you for coming to check on me," she manages, with a tremulous attempt at a smile.

Maleficent's brow furrows subtly, a silent question, but aloud she says only, "Of course."

"I..." Aurora tries to begin, but she feels dread tugging at her stomach, like she's sure Aunt Flora will hear whatever she says somehow, find out any secret she might speak—like the walls of her own apartment hold no safety for her.

Maleficent watches the way Aurora's eyes dart about and seems somehow to read her thoughts. "I wonder if, perhaps, you might like to come and stay with me for a few days? It's nothing special, but I can assure you my walls have no ears, real or imagined."

"Oh, I...wouldn't want to put you out," Aurora stammers, even as she feels a peculiar sort of lightness taking root within her heart.

"Nonsense," says Maleficent. "If you insist, you may repay me—at your leisure, of course—by regaling me with the tale behind the curious text message I received earlier this evening."

"Oh, thank you," Aurora breathes, and her relief seems to wash over her in waves. She throws her arms about Maleficent's shoulders, buries her face in Maleficent's neck, and inhales the faint scent of shampoo and the crispness of a winter's night. "Thank you," she whispers again.

While she throws some things into a bag, Maleficent inspects her apartment. "You investigated the Sleeping Beauty movie after all," she remarks.

"The similarities are a little unnerving," Aurora confesses.

"My name is no coincidence, as it happens," says Maleficent. "My mother was absurdly fond of this movie. Hence the reason I recognized your presumably accidental reference."

Aurora pauses a moment in her haphazard packing, takes the time to relish this fragment of personal information she's been offered at long last. "I've never seen it," she says, after a beat. "Do the princess and the evil fairy get to have a standoff?"

Maleficent leans upon the wall, focuses her attention upon Aurora. "They never even speak, actually."

Aurora frowns as she zips up her bag. "Well, that's no fun."

Maleficent rewards her with one of her rare almost-smiles, and a low, silky chuckle that seems to reverberate in her very soul.

The snow is coming down in sheets when at last they depart, but Maleficent had her taxi driver wait for her. Before they descend the stairs, Aurora throws her head back and smiles up into the sky, the little flecks of cold against her face strangely uplifting. She remembers suddenly something else Maleficent said to her a few months back, when Aurora was struggling to make another confession.

 _It was unpleasant for me_ , she'd said, her own cryptic confession, _but I came out of it all right._

They take the taxi ride in near-silence. Aurora presses her nose against the window to watch the snow fall, still struggling for words she both desperately wants and does not want to speak. She is somewhat distracted by the sight of Maleficent's building, though she realizes of course it oughtn't to come as any surprise that Maleficent lives well. She's remained cryptic about what exactly she does, insisting that the details would bore Aurora terribly. Aurora has taken her deliberate mysticism to mean that she's probably a high-brow smuggler or the leader of a band of undercover assassins or something, though in truth she imagines the answer will be just as simple as the answer behind her unusual name, and Aurora will be left forever to wonder why Maleficent is ruled by such a consistent need to dissemble.

Maleficent's apartment is unsurprising: elegant in its minimalistic design and immaculately clean. Aurora feels a bit like a blemish upon its surface just for setting her things down, but Maleficent seems utterly unconcerned. She offers Aurora the remote control for her television and asks if she'd like a drink.

Aurora flips idly through the channels, unaccustomed to having so many options, and settles upon some old sitcom she thinks she remembers Aunt Merryweather enjoying. She wonders, not without a touch of bitterness, what her other aunts must be thinking of her right now, and whether she even wants to know.

Maleficent offers her a glass of wine and joins her on the sofa. She surprises Aurora by curling her long legs up onto the sofa. Aurora can't quite contain her strange amusement in time, and Maleficent regards her with a raised eyebrow as she sips her own wine.

"What?"

"Sorry, it's like the cheese fries all over again," Aurora shrugs, feeling suddenly almost cheerful. "Sometimes I forget you're a person and not an ancient being of infinite power."

Maleficent doesn't smile, but her dark eyes glitter in the dim lighting. "I think I ought to be insulted," she says lightly. "However, I confess I don't mind giving off that impression."

Aurora follows Maleficent's lead and settles into the couch, takes a sip of the sweet wine Maleficent has poured for her and savours the rush of warmth that courses through her as it goes down. She sighs deeply and closes her eyes. It's strange to feel safer here than at home, or even among family. All things considered, Aurora realizes all too keenly that she knows very little about Maleficent.

She tries to understand now, in this moment of relative peace Maleficent has carved out for her, what exactly it is that makes her feel so at ease, so quick to trust, and comes back to the usual conclusion: that whatever it is about Maleficent that makes her seem intimidating is the same thing that makes Aurora feel safe.

Where Aurora hedges, Maleficent stands strong. Maleficent says exactly what she wants to say, or she says nothing at all. When Maleficent has a question, she asks it—does not demand it, but makes giving her an answer into an inevitability. When faced with something that seems off to her, such as a text message telling her to leave well enough alone, she questions it immediately.

If Aurora had received such a text message, she realizes suddenly, she wouldn't have questioned it. She would have fallen unquestioning into a kind of resigned despair, because she has been waiting for something to go wrong, for Maleficent to tire of her and abandon her to the tragic monotony of her life.

"I wish I were braver," Aurora breathes, barely audible above the white noise from the television.

She feels Maleficent's eyes on her, but Maleficent says nothing, only waits in silence.

"I wish I weren't so afraid to just...be," Aurora continues, frowning. "I wish I didn't have to just sit and wait for something to go horribly wrong. I wish..."

She sets her wine glass down on the coffee table and draws her knees up against her chest while she measures her words. "You're so...steady," she begins, haltingly, "so sure of yourself, and it's...it's almost terrifying." She looks up to meet Maleficent's dark eyes, abruptly feels a fresh wave of terror, and averts her eyes once more.

"I wish I could be...like you," she says. "I wish I didn't feel this dreadful rush of nerves every time I sent a text message. I wish I didn't feel badly every time I didn't want to wear make-up, or do my hair, or didn't want to talk to someone, or every time I _did_ want to talk to someone. I wish I could just..." she holds out her hands, searching, reaching, "tell you...how much I want you, how much I like you, and want you in my life, but I'm..." The words catch in her throat, and somehow, impossibly, she finds that she has more tears to shed this evening.

"But I'm afraid," she whispers through her tears. "I'm afraid of what you'll think, and what my family will say and what everyone will do and so I don't, I don't say _anything_ , and I just sit and wait for the day you disappear forever and I'm left here alone, just doing the same thing over and over and over again."

A flicker of movement catches Aurora's eyes, and Maleficent reaches out to lay a hand on her shoulder, light, hesitant, perhaps even a little awkward. Aurora reaches up to hold it, clings to Maleficent's spindly fingers like the lifeline they are.

"I left my phone at home," Aurora explains at last. "My Aunt Flora came over while I was at work to snoop around and got exactly what she was looking for. And you know what I thought, first, before anything else?" she dares a glance in Maleficent's direction.

"What?" Maleficent wonders quietly.

Aurora closes her eyes, and takes in a shuddering breath. "I thought I should just...agree with her. My aunt, I mean. Walk it all back, pretend it was all a horrible mistake, endure whatever she put me through for however long it lasted, because someday..." She sniffles, and drags her sleeve across her face. "Someday, eventually, they'd manage to make themselves forget. They'd really, genuinely believe that everything was fine again, and they'd never even see how I'd died a little bit inside."

She feels Maleficent's grip tighten on her shoulder, and leans her head against it.

"I'm such a coward," she says, low and harsh. "I'd change every last fragment of who I am, give up every notion of who I'd like to be, just to save myself from a little grief."

"I don't think that's true," says Maleficent, almost gently by comparison.

Aurora scoffs quietly. "Then you must not know me very well."

Maleficent turns her attention to the television, eyes glassy and unseeing, brow furrowed in contemplation. "Shall I tell you something about myself?"

This catches Aurora's attention immediately. _Twice in one night?_ she almost retorts.

Maleficent stares impassively at the television screen for some time before she speaks. "I was with a man, once," she says, and now it's Aurora's turn to be struck utterly speechless.

"My mother had already thrown me out by then, my sisters hadn't spoken to me in years, and my circle of acquaintances at the time preferred simply...not to acknowledge my romantic proclivities," Maleficent continues quietly. "Aside from the expected snide comments from people whose opinions shouldn't matter, I had no outside reason for doing it."

She takes a long sip of her wine. In the background, there's an uproarious laugh track from the sitcom. "I wondered if I could take it all back," she says. "All the fighting and the snide comments and the pretending not to notice and calling it polite." She shakes her head. "It was dreadful, from beginning to end, and that's certainly not a commentary upon the gentleman in question. He was...uncommonly understanding, actually."

Maleficent closes her eyes. "The truly dreadful part," she says slowly, "the part that has never quite ceased to haunt me...is that I _could_ have taken it all back. Anyone, everyone, would have been willing to accept that I had changed my mind, or mended my ways. That everything that came before had been a mistake, or a sordid affair borne of the uncertainty of youth."

 _What happened when you didn't?_ Aurora wants to ask, but she holds her tongue. She's sure this is the most Maleficent has ever spoken to her at once, and she cannot even begin to take it all in. She fears anything she might say will spoil the moment, and Maleficent will withdraw into herself once more.

Maleficent turns dark eyes upon Aurora, alight with some emotion Aurora would be hard-pressed to describe as anything other than certainty. "My point," she says, "is that you aren't a coward for wanting an easier life. We all do what we must to get by from day to day." She withdraws her hand from Aurora's vise grip and places her fingertips over Aurora's heart. "My advice to you is to be honest with yourself. Lying to others is often entirely necessary. Lying to yourself..." she averts her eyes a moment "...that will tear you apart."

Aurora wipes at her face with her sleeve again, and then she nestles herself into Maleficent's outstretched arm. She wraps her arms about Maleficent's slender waist and rests her head upon Maleficent's chest, just under her chin. Maleficent allows it in silence, and wraps arms about Aurora to accommodate her. Aurora breathes her in, tries somehow to soak up everything about her, to remind herself when at last she disappears that the whole thing wasn't a very lovely, very tumultuous dream...to remind herself why she will never, ever walk this back, never pretend even for a second that it was a mistake.

Aurora awakens some indeterminate amount of time later, with the sensation of flying, or falling, or something hovering on the fine line between the two. She grasps sleepily at Maleficent's neck as she realizes she's being carried, and is reluctant to let go when Maleficent lays her down upon the softness of a proper bed.

Maleficent, silhouetted only by the light from the other room, pulls the covers up over Aurora's shoulders, holds a moment, and smoothes Aurora's hair from her face before she moves to depart. Aurora catches her arm.

"Stay," she whispers.

Silence, stillness, and a long moment passes before Maleficent moves at all. She frees her wrist from Aurora's grasp, and Aurora is sure she'll leave, but she pulls at the covers of her bed once more, and Aurora shifts, more than a little surprised, to make room for her. She can sense the hesitation in the stiffness of Maleficent's arms, the way she pauses a moment before her hands find Aurora's waist, tenses a moment when Aurora pulls her closer.

But outside the snow picks up, beats gently against the window, and eventually, Maleficent begins to relax.

"I think..." Aurora murmurs, impulsively, and more than half asleep. "I think it's a little weird, how safe I feel with you. I mean...there's no real reason for it, just that...you don't make me feel like I'm expected to say, or do, or be anything in particular. Besides...you know...myself, and honest. I only wish..." she feels Maleficent's fingers curl subtly upon her waist, and the words catch in her throat a moment. "I wish I could offer you the same understanding, I suppose."

"You think that you don't?" Maleficent wonders. Her voice reverberates low and so, so near, and Aurora feels her body tingling all over.

"I feel like...I've told you so much about myself," says Aurora, "and you've told me so little. I don't mean to sound...I just...I hope you don't...feel like you have to hold your tongue, or something. I don't know. Am I making any sense?"

Maleficent's hand moves to smoothe Aurora's hair, and she leans in to place a kiss, gentle as the falling snow, upon Aurora's forehead. "You possess an uncommonly kind heart, Aurora," she says, low and rich and wonderful. "Perhaps in time I may promise to tell you anything you wish to know. For the moment, consider that sometimes, the leisure of feeling no pressure to speak is a more immediate need than the leisure of speaking freely."

Now it's Aurora's turn to curl her fingers, to draw Maleficent just a bit more closely against her. "Well then," she says, allowing her eyes to fall closed once more, "may you never feel..." she yawns "...any pressure to say a single word, while I talk your ear off for the rest of eternity."

Maleficent chuckles quietly and presses another kiss to Aurora's forehead. "Thank you, Aurora," she says, so warmly it feels like a part of a distant dream.

 _No_ , Aurora never manages to voice before slumber envelopes her, _thank you_. After what happened earlier, how could Aurora ever have imagined she would be able to sleep peacefully?


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Thank you all so much for your incredibly kind words, and for suffering my endless hiatuses! This is the end of this piece for now, though I will go back and fix the beginning a little bit. I hope you enjoy!

* * *

Aurora has a final tomorrow.

She has a final tomorrow, and her rent was due two days ago.

She has a final tomorrow morning at 8, her rent was due two days ago, and Aunt Flora won't stop calling her, over and over and over, now of all times.

Now, suddenly, she wants to talk.

It's like she can sense that Aurora is hovering on the precipice of destruction. Aurora can see it now: all she's worked for, gone in a matter of minutes, and she's back to being her aunt's prisoner and listening to how sick and wrong she is.

Aunt Fauna, Flora's younger and much kinder sister, returned Aurora's phone to her about a week after the Incident, with Maleficent's number blocked and some kind of parental controls activated. Aurora very nearly snapped at Aunt Fauna, whose fault it was not, or burst into tears for the sheer injustice of it all. Instead, she held her tongue and handed her phone over to the first tech-savvy classmate who entered her field of vision, who fixed the problem in about two minutes.

The words on the page in front of her blur together, and she scrubs at her eyes with her sleeve. Her phone begins to buzz for the dozenth time, and she picks it up just in time to watch the time change from 11:59 P.M. to 12:00 A.M.

Aurora has a final today. Her rent was due three days ago.

Maleficent works for an electric company. When Aurora finally found out, she laughed until tears filled her eyes, not least because she was relieved to learn that yet another fact related to her mysterious companion was so utterly ordinary. _It's like the lady from the movie, with the lightning!_ she had insisted, and Maleficent had tried very hard to look affronted.

Maleficent does a lot of paperwork, she says, something about 'statistical analysis'. She says she's good at it because she likes to look at cold, hard numbers and find patterns, and to weigh those patterns against one another across weeks and months and years. She says that every huge, overwhelming problem is made up of many, much smaller and more manageable problems, and the trick to solving a huge problem is to break it down into the kinds of problems you can actually handle.

The problem now is not that Aurora's problems are insurmountable, but that the solutions are intolerable to her.

Aurora drags her fingernail along the edge of her phone case idly. This is her last final, and she hasn't studied as much as she should have, but she's not going to learn anything new in this state. She closes her book and opens her laptop. She looks up her bank account. Close, but not enough, and even if she overdraws her account to pay her rent, there remains the fact that she has one lone can of soup in her apartment, she'll have a phone bill due in another week, and the coffee shop cut back her hours, because technically she was never supposed to be working full-time, because technically she is a student who should be studying for her finals.

Aurora closes her laptop and lays her head down on her desk. Just before she loses consciousness, her phone starts buzzing again, somehow louder and more violent than before, and Aurora feels herself beginning to cry.

She scrubs at her eyes in a vain attempt to stay her tears, feels the overwhelming urge to answer in her anger and frustration, to say all the things she holds deep in the darkest corners of her heart, things she doesn't quite believe, but things that would hurt, because Aunt Flora deserves to hurt for what she's doing.

But just as she thinks this, guilt crashes over her in the wave of a stormy sea, and the force of it fuels her exhausted tears. She waits for the phone to stop ringing and then picks it up to dial a different number.

"Shouldn't you be sleeping?" Maleficent answers, not unkindly.

"Did I wake you?" Aurora asks her, as steadily as she can manage, but she knows how she must sound.

"Of course not," says Maleficent, with unmanufactured evenness. "Are you all right?"

"Not really," Aurora replies thinly, and covers her mouth to stifle a fresh sob.

"Shall I bring you something?" Maleficent asks her, tone unchanged. "Coffee? Sleeping pill?"

Aurora's laughter comes out choked and horrible, and she is immediately glad she called. "You don't have to—"

"Nonsense," Maleficent cuts her off airily. "I wouldn't leave a lady in distress. Unless she didn't desire the company, of course?"

"No, I—" Aurora stammers, feels a sick twist of anxiety in her chest. "I'd like to see you," she manages. "Thank you," she amends not a little miserable with embarrassment.

"Not at all," Maleficent replies, and then she's gone, and Aurora is left clutching her phone to her ear like a lifeline.

Her phone starts to buzz again, and Aurora narrowly resists the urge to throw it across the room.

She'll turn it off, she thinks, once Maleficent gets here, come what may in the future. She is trying to turn her huge, overwhelming problems into the kind she can handle, and right now she can handle the future promise of trouble far better than whatever Aunt Flora wants to say to her right now.

Maleficent arrives around half an hour later, bearing, true to form, both coffee and sleeping pills. A gnawing, guilty part of Aurora wishes she'd asked Maleficent to bring food, but she feels horrible for even thinking it.

"How goes the studying?" Maleficent wonders, in the general direction of Aurora's closed textbook.

"Final's at eight," Aurora shrugs, sounding far more nonchalant than she feels. "If I don't know it by now, I'm screwed, anyway."

Maleficent squints curiously. "A noble attitude."

Aurora cracks a mirthless smile. "Also the words started blurring together."

Maleficent offers the sleeping pills. Aurora's laughter hurts somewhere in her chest.

"I don't think I can."

Maleficent doesn't respond. Instead, she surveys the room thoughtfully, like she's looking for something she can use. Aurora waits and watches, and hopes she finds it, because Aurora doesn't know how to help herself.

Before much time passes, though, Aurora's phone begins to buzz again. "Now this I can deal with," she says, and reaches over to turn it off.

"It's rather late," says Maleficent. "Are you sure you hadn't better answer it?"

Horror courses through Aurora's veins, white-hot and blinding, as she considers that the phone call could have nothing to do with her at all, and that she's being remarkably selfish for ignoring a call when something terrible could have happened.

She answers her phone. "Hello?"

"Finally," in her usual tone, decidedly unburdened by grief. "My goodness, Aurora, I've been calling for hours."

"I was studying, Auntie—I have a final in the morning," says Aurora, already feeling acutely tired.

Aunt Flora sighs. "Well, I hope once all this is over, you'll finally get your head on straight."

Aurora closes her eyes tightly. "Did you need something, Auntie?"

"Oh, I was just wondering when you were planning on moving back home," says Aunt Flora airily.

Aurora's stomach twists. "What do you mean?"

"Well, that silly job at the coffee shop can't be paying your rent for much longer, can it? And what havoc it must be wreaking upon your schooling—honestly, I don't know why you even bother, Aurora. Anyway, we're having a party on Friday. Will you be here by then?"

"I'm doing fine, Auntie," says Aurora thinly. "And I bother because—"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure. You just let me know when you're done with all that."

"Auntie—"

"The party, Aurora. There's a fine young gentleman I'd like to introduce to you. Are you coming?"

"No, thank you, Auntie, I don't—"

"Oh, I see," Flora's tone turns dangerous, and Aurora is very nearly too exhausted to care. "You're much too _busy_ for your poor aunties now. You know, Aurora, when I'm dead and gone, I hope you look back on this moment with the common decency to feel ashamed."

"Auntie—!"

Aunt Flora hangs up, and Aurora feels her stomach twist like actual sickness.

"Aurora?" Maleficent prods quietly, gentle as a night breeze.

"It's like—!" Aurora throws her hands out, reaching, faltering. "It's like she plans it! It's like she knows!"

"What happened?" Maleficent asks her, but keeps her distance. Even still, it's like the walls are closing in.

"Oh, she just—!" Aurora flings a hand vaguely at her phone, and tries valiantly to pretend she is not on the verge of tears. "Just called to ask when I'll be moving home, you know, because of course I won't make it on my own much longer, and why do I even bother when there's some nice young man she could introduce me to at some party I'm supposed to go to, and—!"

Aurora very nearly loses the battle with her tears. She crosses her arms over her chest, swallows hard and squeezes her eyes closed a moment. "And does she know?" she wonders tremulously. "Did she choose today on purpose? Is she tracking my bank account? Does she know I can't pay my rent? Does she know the coffee shop won't give me enough hours? Why is this happening today, of all days? And does it even—I mean, can I even... Oh, I don't know what to do!"

Aurora covers her face and does her best to stifle a sob, terrible and wrenching. Does it even matter? What has any of this been for, if her destiny has always been in the hands of another, if her future has always been inevitable? Was there ever any escape? Did Aurora ruin her chances before she even realized it?

"How much is your rent, if I may ask?"

Aurora waves her hand idly in the direction of the bill. More words come, choked and miserable, as though from somewhere outside her body. "She's right, of course. She's right, and I can't just—" Aurora wipes her eyes miserably. "I could overdraw my account to pay it, but then what about food? What about next month? The coffee shop isn't going to just forget that I'm not supposed to be working full-time, and it takes time to find another job, and I like working there, it's just—!"

Her thought is interrupted by the sound of tearing paper. Maleficent lays a check down on the table and puts away her checkbook. It's for Aurora's rent.

"Oh, no, I couldn't," Aurora says, dimly, feeling light-headed and strange.

"It's no trouble, Aurora," says Maleficent with half of a shrug. "You can pay me back sometime, if you like, but you can also consider it an early birthday gift."

"It's too much, please, I can't—" Aurora holds out her hands, feels herself beginning to cry afresh, hot, heavy tears of shame.

"Aurora, you have a problem and I can help you," says Maleficent.

At that very moment, something strange happens: Aurora's capacity to feel sorrow fractures, and her tears dry abruptly. All that remains is a hollow sort of helplessness, and a desperate need to feel like she has control over any one thing in her life.

"Is this what you wanted?" Aurora asks, barely more than a whisper.

"What?"

Aurora looks up, eyes dry and jaw set, but she feels her stomach churning, and her entire body trembles. "Why do you even like me?" she demands, advancing on a stunned Maleficent. "Is it just because I make you feel powerful? Because you get to swoop in and save the day, because the things that could ruin my life mean nothing to you?"

"No," says Maleficent, simply, earnestly, and yet Aurora will not hear it, cannot believe it.

"Is it because I don't make you talk about yourself?" Aurora continues to advance, and Maleficent retreats, hands held up in defense. "So I don't know anything about what makes you, I don't know…flawed, or….or human? So I don't see you for what you really are?"

Maleficent's face changes then, from soft and concerned to hard and cold. She squares her shoulders and draws herself up to her full height. "And what is that?" she asks crisply.

Cruel words catch at the back of Aurora's throat—things she shouldn't say and doesn't mean, but things that would hurt. A coward, or a monster, or a predator. But shame saves her from such a sickening accusation, and she backs down beneath Maleficent's steely gaze.

Maleficent gestures to the side, indicating the check she's left on the table. "The offer stands, Aurora," she says stiffly, and then she leaves, and the only sound in the whole world is the door clicking closed behind her.

It's four in the morning. Aurora has a final in four hours.

She cries some more, the miserable, retching kind of sob that feels like being physically ill, that's far more about being exhausted than about actually being upset any longer, and she barely sleeps. Sometime around six, she uses Maleficent's money to pay her rent, and she buys herself some breakfast. She shows up to her final red-eyed and stuffy-nosed, and her best hope is that some of her answers are remotely coherent. She longs for the distraction of working at the coffee shop, but she's off for two more days.

She falls asleep curled up in a chair in the school library, vaguely aware that her neck is killing her, but unable to summon the strength to adjust.

In her dreams, she is the Princess Aurora from the movie for children, living in a castle and surrounded by people who love her. Everyone is telling her, over and over like a chant, how happy she ought to be. She has nothing to want, nothing to strive for. She need only marry the Prince and live happily ever after.

But they're wrong. Aurora wants a life of her own, and loved ones of her own choosing, who do not tell her what she ought to want. Perhaps some are contented never to long for anything beyond their present circumstances, but Aurora is not among them. What is life, she tries to tell her aunties—who are of course the three fairy godmothers—if not wanting, reaching, longing, striving?

"Well," Aunt Flora sighs, "I hope after the wedding is over, you'll get your head on straight."

And suddenly she is in a bridal gown, face shrouded in filmy white. She is herself and she is someone watching herself, walking down the aisle to marry her Prince, who is of course an approximation of Phillip, the son of a friend of her late father whom Aurora ought therefore to adore.

There is music, she thinks—the kind you would expect at a grand, royal wedding, with rich orchestration and people in beautiful clothes dancing—and somewhere off to the side, there is a shadow of a person, watching, waiting.

Aurora is dancing with her Prince, but her attention is on the shadow. She knows without knowing who it will be, wants without wanting to see her again, feels her cheeks flush with embarrassment for how they parted, even though a part of Aurora knows she is only dreaming, and this version of Maleficent might not even remember, might never have known.

Maleficent emerges, green skin and horned headdress like the villain from the movie, yet somehow still utterly unmistakable, and the room falls silent. No more music, no more laughter, and the people in fancy clothes seem to dim by comparison.

"You're frightened," says Maleficent, in a voice somehow just a little bit more than her own.

"Yes," says Aurora, in a voice that feels vague and distant. "But not of you."

"Are you quite certain?" Maleficent wonders. She extends her hand, draped in a long, black cloak. "Perhaps you should be."

"Perhaps I should," Aurora says simply. She reaches for Maleficent's hand.

Suddenly she is faintly aware of a buzzing noise, utterly out of place in her dreamscape. Maleficent dissolves into smoke before her eyes, and Aurora jolts awake.

Aurora looks at her phone, heart filling up with dizzying hope, but it's just a text saying her payment went through. She sighs heavily and lays her head back down on her arm. She wants to apologize, knows she needs to, and logically she even thinks Maleficent will understand. Still, the thought of facing Maleficent again sends dread coursing through her like ice in her veins.

She's afraid of needing Maleficent, and afraid of losing her. She's afraid of losing that half-spoken thing that hangs between them, that sometimes allows them to share long hours and late nights embracing, that means that if Aurora kisses Maleficent, Maleficent will kiss her back, but she, herself, will only ever kiss Aurora's hands or her forehead or, on a few blissful occasions, her cheek. Once, when they were walking together and Aurora teased her about catching her underneath something that looked vaguely like mistletoe, Maleficent folded her hands behind her back and leaned in to kiss Aurora at the very corner of her lips.

Aurora wants more, she realizes, as though it weren't obvious, but she is afraid of what wanting more will mean. What's more, and what always seems so bizarre to her, is that she's sure Maleficent already knows this, knows far beyond what Aurora has said out loud the reason behind her fears.

 _You're frightened_ , said the Maleficent in her dream.

 _Yes_ , Aurora had said, _but not of you_.

Aurora scrubs at her eyes with her sleeve as she sits up, then stretches out her arms and allows herself another heavy sigh. She's done with her finals, come what may, her rent is paid, and she's had a full meal. That's a lot more than she had a few short hours ago.

On the way to the bus stop, Aurora passes by her coffee shop and, on a whim, glances inside. Sure enough, there sits Maleficent, at her preferred table, large black coffee just past the fingertips of one hand while the other scratches in shorthand. Aurora is so captivated by the sight that she barely realizes she's pushed open the door.

Maleficent glances upward briefly, looks down, then looks up again. Her expression is as open as Aurora has ever seen it. She looks a little surprised, and very hesitant. Her fingers curl around her pencil as she brings it to rest at the angle of her jaw.

Aurora approaches, hands folded in front of her. "I'm sorry about this morning," she begins.

"No harm done," says Maleficent, but her expression does not change.

Aurora averts her eyes, overwhelmed by the intensity of Maleficent's gaze. "I didn't even thank you," she shakes her head, feels treacherous tears threatening to form at the corners of her eyes. She blinks them away and looks up. "Thank you," she says, as firmly as she can manage. "You saved me more trouble than you even know."

The corner of Maleficent's lip twitches subtly, and she gestures with her pencil-wielding hand to the empty seat across from her.

"Actually," Aurora looks down at her hands, unaccountably nervous, still so afraid of wanting even something so simple, "are you busy? Could we…go somewhere else?"

Maleficent's eyes narrow subtly, studiously, but she stacks up her papers, puts them into her briefcase, and stands. She glances down at her coffee and turns it around as she picks it up so that Aurora can see the name on the coffee collar.

"Me-li-ficent," Aurora squints as she reads, but she feels her heart lighten at the familiarity of the exchange. "At least they tried," she offers.

Maleficent turns the coffee back around and quirks a brow disapprovingly at it. "Hm," she replies simply. Then, "At your leisure, milady," she says, and gestures that Aurora should lead the way.

It's just starting to feel like spring. A chill lingers in the air, and there's still old snow packed up on the sides of streets. Aurora shoves her hands deep in her pockets to fight the chill, but it does her little good. She wonders what it must be like to be Maleficent, who never says very much, and never seems to want to. Aurora often feels as though she's full to overflowing with words she's afraid to say aloud, so much so that they always end up spilling out, all twisted and wrong and not at all the way she meant them.

"I'm sorry again," Aurora begins at last, slowly, "for how I acted last night."

"It's no trouble, Aurora," says Maleficent.

 _But it could have been_ , Aurora does not say. "You were trying to help me, and I lashed out at you. It wasn't your fault I was upset."

"I know that," says Maleficent. "But you weren't unreasonable to question my motives. It's not a bad thing to be cautious with people. I have the luxury of knowing my own intentions, while you do not."

Aurora picks at the cuff of her jacket sleeve. "I wish you'd tell me."

"What," Maleficent wonders, "that I mean you no harm? Even if I said that, you still wouldn't know."

"I suppose you're right," Aurora lets out a little huff of a sigh.

"I expect you're suspicious of assistance because of the way it's been used to control you in the past," says Maleficent. "I'm sure you know that's not an unreasonable parallel to draw."

Aurora looks up, surprised. "I…" she begins, falters, looks away. "It's not the same at all," she says, more to herself than to Maleficent.

"Perhaps not," says Maleficent, "but the body remembers. It troubles you that I don't tell you much about myself, for example. When I think of sharing something that once brought me pain, I still remember that pain, even if the situation is utterly different."

"I know that, I mean I figured that, but…" Aurora gestures vaguely.

"But?" Maleficent presses.

They continue their walk in silence for some time. It's not busy on the street, and the only sounds are of birds chirping and distant cars. Aurora vaguely realizes she's leading them to her apartment.

Aurora thinks about the first time they kissed, and what Maleficent said to her that gave her the courage to go through with it. She said something like, you could spend every day of your life doing what you're supposed to, and bad things would still happen. She said that the likelihood of anything turning out for the best is very small, but…

 _But if you never try, never risk anything? You lose even that._

Aurora stops walking, and Maleficent follows suit. "Do you like me?" Aurora asks her. "I mean, as more than a friend." The words feel stupid, and awkward, but Aurora holds her head high.

"Of course I do," says Maleficent, stone-faced as ever.

"Then why do you never kiss me first?" The words feel hot and wrong and so, so horribly embarrassing, but Aurora does not stop. "Why—" she falters, inhales sharply. "Why have we never…gone any further than that?"

In the back of her mind, Aurora wonders whether even a few months ago, she would have noticed the way Maleficent's expression changes. It's infinitesimal, not even a change so much as a shift, or a shade, something about the eyes, and the way her lips part ever so slightly while she considers her response.

"I have the luxury," says Maleficent softly, slowly, "of knowing my intentions. "I didn't want you to think…" she averts her eyes swiftly, subtly, just a flick away and back, "To think that I meant you any harm."

Aurora withdraws her hands from her pockets and reaches for Maleficent's. "I don't think that," she says simply.

Maleficent doesn't speak. She takes Aurora's hands, but continues to study her with a strange kind of stillness. Aurora is still nervous, but now she feels unsteady with the rush of relief that comes of speaking one's mind when the words are most difficult.

"Come inside?" Aurora asks her.

Maleficent nods subtly, and the corners of her lips twitch in that almost-smile that sets Aurora's heart aflutter. "If you like," she says quietly.

Aurora turns to lead Maleficent inside, one hand still holding hers, still nervous, still unsteady on her own legs, but buoyed by a wavering, bubbling kind of hope. No sooner has she closed her apartment door than Maleficent takes her firmly by the arms and backs her into it, leaning in and looming over, eyes alight, somehow so much more intense even than before, yet still holding back.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Aurora thinks that perhaps the things that frighten them are not nearly as different as she thought. Her hands find the subtle dip of Maleficent's waist, and she nods subtly. "Please," she breathes.

Maleficent's kiss is overwhelming, like she's somehow blocked out the rest of the world around them, and Aurora surrenders willingly. She'd thought perhaps there would have to be more, that she'd have to stumble over more of her ill-formed thoughts, assert again and again that this is what she wants, and that though she is afraid, it is not because of Maleficent, but rather because of everything else.

Maleficent takes Aurora's face between her hands, and Aurora uses her newly-freed hands to push Maleficent's coat off over her shoulders. She throws her arms around Maleficent's neck and wills her impossibly closer, barely notices the low moan that escapes her when Maleficent threads her fingers through Aurora's hair.

Maleficent kisses Aurora's neck, and the sensation sends a jolt through Aurora's body that causes her to cry out with abandon. She tugs at the buttons on Maleficent's shirt, desperate for more of her, and once she's undone enough of them, she pushes her hands beneath the fabric, relishes the feeling of Maleficent's bare skin beneath her palms.

Maleficent traces her fingertips over Aurora's shoulders, down her arms and then along her sides until she reaches Aurora's hips. She follows Aurora's lead, sliding her hands up under the fabric of Aurora's shirt and running her palms over Aurora's back. She draws the skin of Aurora's neck gently between her teeth, and Aurora digs her nails into Maleficent's back in response.

Maleficent pulls Aurora's shirt over her head with little trouble, and Aurora struggles to push Maleficent's shirt the rest of the way off. Maleficent practically has to kneel to kiss Aurora's breasts, and when Maleficent grasps her by the hips to steady them both, Aurora is sure her feet actually leave the floor at least twice.

It's so different from everything they've shared before, rough and unrestrained, perhaps even desperate. And maybe it should be shocking, or even frightening, but Aurora is surprised by how natural it feels.

Maleficent half-leads, half-carries Aurora to her bed, and she holds a moment, leaning over Aurora in the filtered light of late afternoon, studying her face the same way she was doing earlier, with a kind of happy bewilderment.

Aurora smiles up at her, and reaches up to fix a strand of hair that's fallen out of place. Maleficent catches her hand and kisses her wrist, and Aurora thinks about all the times she's dreamed of this moment, ever since Maleficent was just the mysterious, slightly scary coffee shop lady.

"Are you all right?" Maleficent asks her, drawing a strand of Aurora's hair between her fingers slowly, methodically.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Aurora wonders, with a little huff of laughter.

Maleficent inclines her head thoughtfully. "You've had quite a day," she says.

Aurora scrunches up her nose. "Is that really what you want to talk about right now?"

And then something wonderful happens. Maleficent actually smiles. She tries to hide it, purses her lips and averts her eyes, but she lets out a soft, warm chuckle, and Aurora returns her smile at least a hundredfold.

Aurora pulls Maleficent down into another kiss, softer and slower and warmer than before, and the way it feels to have Maleficent's bare skin against hers is beyond description. Maleficent's fingers trace the waistband of Aurora's pants before she slides the pants over Aurora's hips, slow and methodical even as Aurora feels herself leaning with her entire body into every brush of Maleficent's fingers. When Maleficent pulls away from her, Aurora very nearly drags her back down, can scarcely stand what little distance there is between them.

But Maleficent moves with such deliberation, such certainty, that Aurora cannot imagine how she would protest, and in the end, she is glad she doesn't. Maleficent is watching her intently, studiously, and it's almost too much to bear, but Aurora cannot look away. Maleficent pulls Aurora's underwear down over her hips and leans down, with agonizing slowness, to press a kiss between Aurora's legs.

She wonders whether perhaps she is dreaming, but how could her own mind offer her something so miraculous as this? Aurora inhales sharply, in small, broken little gasps as Maleficent continues, and she reaches down to thread her fingers through Maleficent's hair, to feel the familiar texture and the realness, the solidity of it, to anchor herself to the physical world even as she feels she can never quite return to reality after this.

Maleficent wraps one arm around Aurora's thigh and curls a finger inside of Aurora, and Aurora's body curls up off of the bed as she cries out. Her grip on Maleficent's hair tightens, and she thinks again of all the times she's dreamt of this, and how woefully her imagination has failed her. Maleficent hums softly, perhaps in response to Aurora's grip on her hair, and this subtle sound seems to resonate throughout Aurora's entire body, all the way out to her fingers and down to her toes.

She is close to climax, she can feel it, can feel what remains of the physical realm starting to blur around the edges, and in the end, she doesn't know what does it, whether it's the skill and deliberation of Maleficent's tongue and fingers or just the thought of it, that it is Maleficent here, well and truly, and that she is so much more than a dream.

Aurora realizes sometime later that she is crying—not sobbing, not painfully, just shedding slow, gentle tears, and mouthing words she barely understands. Maleficent is holding her close, stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head.

 _There is hope_ , she is saying to herself, over and over and over, barely comprehending. _There is hope, there is hope, there is hope, there is hope…_

She's finished with her finals, and all but the last one went fine. Maleficent helped her pay her rent this month, and she doesn't have to move back home, or go to a party and meet a boy and try to pretend she's whatever her aunties want her to be.

She has Maleficent, for now, for however long it lasts. She is brave enough to want something, brave enough to allow herself to have it. And Maleficent likes her, so desperately doesn't want to hurt her that the fear seems to paralyze her. It won't be easy for them, but Aurora is beginning to think she understands Maleficent better than she realized.

And there is so much hope. If a moment like this can exist, if Aurora can feel so completely happy, so loved, so free, well then, who's to say what the future will bring?

There is hope, and that's what matters to her now. Things may not be perfect, but there is so much hope.

"What are you saying?" Maleficent asks her softly, and presses another kiss to her forehead.

"Oh," Aurora sniffles, and swipes a hand across her eyes before she buries her head in Maleficent's shoulder once more. "Nothing. Just…"

Maleficent won't ask her, if she wants to keep it for herself. Maleficent won't laugh at her if she wants to say it out loud.

"There's hope," says Aurora, without entirely meaning to, not much louder than before. "There's hope," she says again, squeezing her eyes closed. "There's hope."

"Always," says Maleficent. She pulls Aurora closer and kisses the top of her head again, then again.

 _There is hope_ , Aurora thinks, over and over, until she falls asleep. _There is hope, there is hope, there is hope_.


End file.
